


The Exception Not the Rule

by pressdbtwnpages



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, names-on-wrists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-05 22:51:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12198993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pressdbtwnpages/pseuds/pressdbtwnpages
Summary: Betty Cooper doesn't believe in soulmates.





	The Exception Not the Rule

**Author's Note:**

> Um, this is the longest thing I've written in AWHILE.
> 
> A huge thank you to [weesaw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weesaw) for looking this over for me.
> 
> I'm not super good at tumblr, but you're welcome to friend me there or on twitter, where my username continues to be pressdbtwnpages.

Betty Cooper doesn't believe in soulmates.

It is, admittedly, a ridiculous line to take, given that 99% of the population has a name on their wrist.

But Betty's thesis is this: Soulmarks are a self-fulfilling prophecy. And given that Archie's mom lives in Chicago and Jughead's mom lives in Toledo, they don't actually mean much after the initial revelation. They're like a messed up scavenger hunt, they give you a starting place, but then you meet a guy named Hal who has the name 'Alice' on his wrist - in Betty's parents case - and you marry them. Never mind that Hal and Alice are pretty common names, that the odds are pretty good that there are other Hal's in the world with 'Alice' on their wrists. What if her mom had met one of them, first? What if she hadn't grown up with Hal Cooper? Would Betty and Polly not have been born?

"I don't _know_ , Betty." Her mom answers impatiently. "I've never met another Hal with my name on his wrist. Your dad's my soulmate. Try not to worry about this so much, you're just a late bloomer. You'll get a name on your wrist eventually."

And, okay, there is that. Part of why Betty doesn't believe in soulmates - in addition to her well-reasoned theories - is that her own wrists remain stubbornly blank.

Jughead has been wearing long sleeves for as long as she's known him, pulling his sleeves down over his hands as a nervous habit. She doesn't think she's ever seen him in just a t-shirt, even on the hottest days of summer.

Kevin's name came in in the fifth grade. It took him a bit longer to realize he was looking for a boy "Jamie," but that's figured out now.

Jason was Polly's soulmate, but he wasn't hers. He was Cheryl's. Sometimes soulmarks take people that way, but mostly, in Riverdale, they're cishet marriages resulting in 2.5 children and a figurative white picket fence.

Even Archie's taken to wearing a leather cuff around his left wrist. Betty's too polite to ask, but she's dying to know the name under that cuff. And yes, the part of her - the teeny, tiny part of her - that wants to believe soulmates are real hopes it's hers.

Although if it is Betty's name on Archie's wrist, she doesn't know why he won't just tell her. Maybe he thinks they're too young.

"Or maybe you'll just have to take matters into your own hands," Kevin says, watching her get ready for what she is calling a date and Archie is calling 'grabbing a burger at Pop's and filling each other in on their summers.'

"That's the plan, Kev."

A plan which doesn't go to plan when Archie zones out in the middle of her declaration of love, instead gazing behind her at the brunette who has just walked in.

When she introduces herself, Archie repeats the name, "Veronica," in a way that sounds to Betty - who has been listening to Archie Andrews for over a decade - like quiet alarm.

And when Archie introduces himself, Veronica repeats his name like a question and her right hand drifts down to the sparkly cuff around her right wrist.

"Betty Cooper," she introduces herself when it becomes clear no one else is going to acknowledge her presence.

A few more minutes of small talk and Veronica's order is ready and Betty and Archie return to their milkshakes and talk about their summer. It's different, though, than it was before Veronica walked into their lives, and it takes a long time for the panic around Archie's eyes to recede.

*

Betty's mom makes her go to the doctor about her failure to take her Adderall. She doesn't actually mind. It gives her an opportunity to ask her pediatrician something.

"It's perfectly normal, Miss Cooper," Dr. Kendall says, still holding her blank wrists in his gloved hands. "Many people your age haven't developed their soulmarks yet."

"Everyone I know has," Betty tells him stubbornly. She thinks about Cheryl's mark, worn bare and adorned with tattooed hearts, and Josie McCoy's wrist full of beaded bracelets.

"Have you considered," Dr. Kendall says in the gentle tone he's used all of her life to soothe her, "that they might be hiding their own lack of soulmark?"

The image of Jughead tugging his sleeves down over his hands flashes through Betty's mind.

She hadn't actually considered the possibility that anyone might be faking - or, not _faking_ but deliberately implying false information about - their soulmarks. Not her friends, but it does seem like something the girls on the River Vixens might do.

"Hmm," she says.

"As I said, it's nothing to be concerned about. If you still don't have a mark when you turn 18 - and you're still worried about it - we can start sending you to specialists. See if maybe your telepathy is even lower than the rest of the population's."

"Okay," Betty accepts the doctor's decision. Then she asks for birth control, because you don't have to have a soulmate to have sex and Betty is a practical girl. She's not thinking about Archie in particular, but she's not not thinking about him either

She tells her mom Dr. Kendall prescribed it to keep her skin clear, because if she doesn't, her mother will find it somehow and assume ludicrous things about Betty's non-existent lovelife.

*

Betty takes her doctor's advice to heart. She embraces her markless-ness, rolling up her shirtsleeves, adorning her wrists with delicate bracelets that leave nothing to the imagination. She picks a sleeveless dress for the back to school dance. She is brazen with it. Or, as brazen as it is possible for Betty Cooper to be about anything.

Mostly no one seems to notice. Cheryl says something catty about Betty being too bland to even have a soulmate, but Cheryl's soulmate is her dead brother, so there's only so far under Betty's skin her barbs can get.

*

The dance is good, the afterparty is bad, and Archie coming to find her goes from hopeful to heartbreaking in a matter of seconds.

"Do you love me? Or even like me?" Betty asks, because she can't not know anymore.

"Of course I love you, Betty. But there's a name on my wrist and it isn't yours." Archie is sweet and sincere and devastating. 

"A name on your wrist doesn't _mean_ anything!" She protests. "It doesn't have to."

"You don't understand," Archie says, taking her hand and turning her arm so that they can both see the blank space under her pulse point where a name should be, "you don't have one."

It is maybe the cruelest thing anyone has ever done to her, up to and including her parents sending Polly away without a chance to say goodbye.

Betty yanks her hand out of Archie's, turns, and flees into her house.

He texts her, but Betty is done with Archibald Andrews.

* 

Betty is not done with Archibald Andrews. Betty will probably never be done with Archibald Andrews. He is her best friend, they have known each other since they were four years old, and, yes, the fact that Betty's mom has decided she hates him now is another point in his favor.

Betty takes the path of least resistance. It's only practical, but feelings don't really work that way. 

*

Veronica says her mom says a friend is better than a boyfriend, and that's probably true, but it isn't what Betty wants.

Betty wants.

She wants a name on her wrist. To be normal. To have someone to aim for instead of this blank expanse of nothingness ahead of her.

That's why she doesn't believe in soulmates. The whole scavenger hunt of it all. It doesn't sound like love, it sounds like a game, and Betty doesn't have a whole lot of patience for wasting time.

*

Soulmarks don't always come up on wrists. Sometimes they show up on ribs, or shoulder blades, occasionally ankles. Supposedly - medically - it doesn't signify anything, is just the place with the thinnest skin and most capillaries, but culturally there is a lot of lore about it.

Betty Cooper is very thorough. Part of her shower routine is checking thoroughly for any sign that her mark might be coming through.

*

Betty's fingernails bite crescents into the palms of her hands that don't go away.

She wonders if subconsciously she's sublimating her desire for a soulmark by marking herself.

Maybe she is her own soulmate.

*

Jughead notices. Betty sees him take in her sleeveless red shirt, her long bare arms, delicate bracelet, nameless wrist.

He doesn't say anything - about her soulmark or lack thereof, anyway - but he notices.

*

Chuck also notices her bare wrists. He takes them as a challenge.

She takes him as a challenge.

They both survive the encounter, which in retrospect Betty thinks is probably a win.

*

Archie can't be with Betty because of the name on his wrist, but he can have an affair with Ms. Grundy. Betty would bet a million dollars the name on his wrist isn't _Geraldine_. It stings.

It also stings that Jughead knew and didn't tell her. Which, is an interesting reaction.

*

Jughead has been Betty's friend for a really long time. Somehow, though, in the last few years she stopped seeing him.

Maybe in middle school, when Archie got cool, Betty tried to be cool, and Juggie leaned the opposite way into being a cynical loner.

They stayed friends. The kind of friends you slide into a booth next to without being invited, the kind of friends who know your favorite movie, and ask to join the school paper. Not the kinds of friends who share secrets, not the kind of friends who can read you like a book.

But Betty's watching now. There's this instinct she's feeling lately, when things get bad or hard or weird - she wants to run to Jughead. Wants to tell him everything she knows and be his sounding board as they work together towards the truth.

She doesn't want to tell Archie about Polly, doesn't want to sneak into Jason Blossom's bedroom with Kevin. Betty doesn't trust anyone but Jughead with things like this. Dangerous things.

*

It's strange how she and Jughead can communicate wordlessly, given how obsessed they both are with the written word.

But Betty likes the secrets between them. Likes that she can say "go now" and he can say "the things I do for you, hurry up about it" without speaking. How he can ask for her carrot sticks and she can trade for some of his chips without a word between them.

It feels intimate, and strangely not strange. Of course they had this in them, between them.

*

It is a surprise when Jughead kisses her, but not an unwelcome one. It is like the best birthday gift, not one on your wishlist or something you'd ever think of, but absolutely right. The kind of gift only someone who really knows you can give.

Betty hesitates for a second, before leaning into the kiss. But Jughead wants her, wants this, and she does too. To hell with soulmates and everyone else.

There's no long discussion about their feelings afterwards, in part because they are off chasing a new lead in their investigation.

But mostly, Betty thinks it's because they tell each other everything they need to know without words, which is refreshing post-Archie.

She knows without him having to say it, that their kiss was not random on his part. It was thought through, a declaration of intent. And Betty declared things right back, leaning into him, smiling softly.

So, no, Jughead never spoke the words "Do you want to be my girlfriend?" But he asked them all the same.

They are more than friends or practice for their future. They are together, in it until they can't be.

He keeps kissing her, stands half a step closer, continues their investigations.

It's good. 

*

Veronica notices first, turning Betty's right arm to get a better look. They're sitting at Veronica's dining room table, ostensibly doing math homework but really Veronica is painting Betty's nails a vampy peacock-y green that she'll take off before her mother sees. It isn't worth fighting either of them. Betty has bigger fights to fight.

"Is that..?"

And Betty sees the faint blue lines of her capillaries pushing up towards the surface of her skin, sending her a message.

They're just faint, only a few vertical lines so far, but a name is coming.

"Oh! Oh."

Betty is relieved. Betty is troubled. She really _likes_ Jughead, and the thing they have between them.

The name on his wrist - whoever it might be - hasn't affected things between them, but hers almost certainly will.

*

Betty watches the thin lines slowly raise on her wrist. She worries - wonders - worries about what the name might be. What it will bring.

She's happy with Jughead. She wants to be with him.

You hear occasionally about couples defying the odds - defying their marks - to be together. Usually it's in tabloids or on The Bachelor and mostly the relationships don't last.

Betty still thinks that's a self-fulfilling prophecy, though. She's not, like, a love expert, or even all that experienced, but she can't imagine the strain of the person you love having someone else's name on their skin. You'd always wonder if it's someone you know, or some stranger who's going to show up in the next moment.

Just thinking about it stresses Betty out. No wonder those kinds of relationships are so hard to keep.

*

"Who is it?" Betty's mom asks as they're in the kitchen chopping vegetables for dinner. She's looking at the sweatband Betty's pulled on over her right wrist.

"Mom! You can't just ask someone who their soulmark is!"

"You're not someone, you're my daughter."

Betty knows her mother will stop at nothing to get her hands on a piece of information she wants. Especially when her source is reluctant to divulge. So before bed, Betty carefully sticks a big band-aid over her soulmark.

She'll miss seeing it, but at least she knows it's there now.

She's not ashamed of the name on her wrist, thinks her mom even might be kind of pleased, but, she's not ready to share it yet.

Betty knows what Archie meant now, the night she told him she loved him. He said it in the shittiest possible way, but, even if you don't believe in soulmates, your soulmark is special.

She wants to settle into it. Wants it to feel like part of her before she lets anyone else near it.

Betty still thinks soulmarks are self-fulfilling prophecy, but, she's not opposed to letting fate steer her along this particular path.

*

Clenching her fists until they bleed was not a subconscious sublimation for her desire for a soulmark, because Betty has a soulmark now and she's still digging her fingernails into her palms.

They are two separate forces operating on her skin, internal and external. She feels like the tide, powerful enough on her own, but still ruled by something beyond her own control.

*

"Show me?" Betty asks. They're sitting on the same side of a booth at Pop's and she thinks it's time they both knew their fates.

Jughead looks nervous as he pushes up his sleeves.

"It's a could be anyone," he warns. "It's a common name."

It is. Elizabeth is a very common name.

"But the name on my wrist isn't."

Betty rolls up her sleeve, shows Jughead the name carefully printed across her skin. F-o-r-s-y-t-h-e.

"Betty." Her name sounds like it is being pulled from deep within him. It sounds like it hurts.

Panic starts to spring up within her.

And then Jughead is pulling her even closer to him, pressing her into his chest and repeating her name over and over like a prayer. "Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth."

"Forsythe," she murmurs back. It feels weird, calling Jughead that, but also right. "Forsythe, Forsythe, Forsythe."

*

Betty Cooper still doesn't believe in soulmates, but she believes in him.


End file.
